


I Understand

by Ryomou



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Bonding, F/M, Gen, M/M, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 09:23:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19850224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryomou/pseuds/Ryomou
Summary: Eleven wants to have a talk that Will's not ready for."You like Mike...like I like Mike."





	I Understand

**Author's Note:**

> I need more El and Will moments so I'm making my own. I wrote this in one sitting so there may be some mistakes, please feel free to let me know if you see any, I'm happy to fix them.  
> Follow me on tumblr at ryomouwrites if you feel like it

Will likes Eleven, he really does. Ignoring the superpowers and the fact that she’s saved his life more than once, he genuinely enjoys her as a person. He never gets tired of the almost childlike wonder in her eyes as she discovers the world around her. Something as simple as a decade old toy is as enchanting to her as a galaxy—she gets fascinated by the way things work and how they are made, how they’re used and why people love them.

El loves reading and being read to, and from the time they first met to now, her handwriting has come a long way, just because she has fun practicing her letters. There’s a simplicity about her despite her complex upbringing, and Will admires that. There’s very little bitterness to her; almost like she lives purely for the sake of living, for the joy of experiencing new things. New foods, new music, new clothes, new friends.

Will likes her, but sometimes he wishes he could hate her.

It makes him feel bad, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Everyone treats Will like he’s some kind of saint, especially since he went missing in the Upside Down. He’s known for being kind and for being gentle—the peacekeeper, Mike calls it. What they don’t know about is the vicious amount of jealousy Will holds inside his heart. He’s jealous of El—specifically her relationship with Mike.

If you discount him coughing up and interdemsional slug and transporting back and forth between reality and the Upside Down, the time that El was gone were some of the best months of Will’s life. It makes him feel sick thinking about it, because he wants to be a good person, and he wants to be happy for his friend; but he misses being happy for himself too.

He misses Mike’s gentleness. The way he’d casually rest a hand between Will’s shoulder blades as they walked into school his first few weeks back, despite the taunting whispers of “queer” and “fag” that followed them down the hall.

“Just ignore them, Will,” Mike would say. 

And Will would. Because no words, no matter how much they hurt, could compare to the joyous feeling of Mike’s willing touch. He knows his friend didn’t mean anything by it, just like he didn’t mean anything when he rested his hand on top of his when he was so distraught by the Mind Flayer, or when he crawled out of his sleeping bag to curl up in bed next to Will during a particularly bad nightmare.

Mike isn’t/wasn’t/will never be like him.

Mike doesn’t favor the warm callouses of a boys hand over the softness of a girls, he doesn’t like the feeling of being towered over by someone much taller, or enjoy the sharp angles of developing jawlines instead of curved female cheeks.

Yeah, Will is queer, just like his dad said. Just like everybody says. He wishes that he wasn’t, he wishes he liked girls—for as long as he could remember, every year for his birthday, when it came time to blow out the candles, he’d wish for the universe to _please_ make him _straight_.

It never did.

And now, he’s here.

With Lucas and Max, Mike and El, Dustin and this “Suzie” they keep hearing about…and just…him. Alone.

Sometimes he wonders if El can tell, if she can see the darkness eating him alive, because there are moments when she looks at him that feel just this side of wrong. As though she’s looking straight into his soul, and it makes him feel naked and vulnerable in a way that he never knew was possible without _actually_ being naked. It’s when they’re hiking up to Dustin’s radio—

“For modifications, guys, maybe the signal isn’t strong enough—”

for the second time that week that he discovers his suspicions are true.

Mike is up front with Dustin, deep in conversation about something Will can’t hear, and Lucas and Max are joking around pushing and shoving each other every now and then. El had been with them, but then, Will blinked, and she was right beside him.

“Hello,” she greats. Her voice is soft, almost thoughtful, like it always is.

“Hey,” Will says in return. He kind of doesn’t want to talk to her. Not today. Not when Mike is wearing shorts, and his legs are so, _so_ long, and he and El have been holding hands for the last four hours at least, and loneliness is burning bright deep inside Will’s heart.

“Can we…talk?” Eleven asks.

“About what?”

She pauses in her steps and Will follows suit, letting the party trail farther and farther ahead of them.

“About you. And Mike.”

Anger explodes deep inside his chest, like a 4th of July firework set off too soon. He doesn’t want to talk about that with her, not now, or preferably ever.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Will says, and he keeps walking.

“Will,” her voice is still so soft. “I understand.”

Will drops everything he’s holding, poles and scraps of metal clattering to the ground. It’s rare for him to lose his temper, even more rare for him to lose it on a girl, just because of how he’d been raised. But this, he can’t do this.

“Understand what, huh?” He wants to get in her face. Wants to yell and scream that she has what he wants. That she has everything. What could she possibly understand about him? “What do you think you understand?”

“You are…different.”

He wants to deny it. The smart part of him says he should—says he should say ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

“Yeah, no shit,” comes out instead.

“Will,” she grabs onto his arm, touch careful. “It’s okay.”

“ _No_ , El. It’s not _okay_.” He jerks his arm away from her as if he’s been burned. “And you _don’t_ understand. You don’t understand anything. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

Will starts gathering his stuff up off the ground, ready to storm off, when she speaks again.

“You like Mike…like I like Mike.”

He wishes she that she would shut up. He wishes he could keep his feelings under control. He wishes he never liked Mike in the first place. He should be liking girls—girls with long hair, and soft laughs; maybe girls that skateboard like Max or like reading like Nancy. He wishes he didn’t feel like crying in a field in front of his best friend’s girlfriend with his entire party thirty feet in front of them.

“ _Stop_. Just stop. People…people don’t talk about that,” Will says, voice wavering.

“Why?”

And El is genuinely confused, because for all that she’s seen, she's never seen this kind of hate before. The hate reserved for people like Will.

“It’s bad to like a friend’s boyfriend?” she asks.

Will almost laughs.

“I mean, yeah, that’s…that’s bad. People usually don’t want that to happen.”

“Oh. Is that why you won’t talk about it?”

This is why Will can’t hate El. She is too kindhearted—to openminded.

“No. It’s…” he stands up straight and turns to face her. She’s pretty like this, hair pulled back away from her face in the summer heat, brown strands dancing behind her like a halo in the light breeze. He can see every reason why Mike would like her even if she weren’t such an amazing person. He lowers his voice. “They don’t know. The guys. Nobody does.”

“Why not?”

Will doesn’t want to be the one to show this side of the world to her, because she’s already seen so much ugliness and she really doesn’t need to see more.

“It’s not considered…normal,” Will’s voice hitches on normal, and a deep ache spreads from his heart to his fingertips because that’s all he’s ever wanted. Just to be normal. “Guys…they aren’t supposed to like other guys. Not…not like I do.”

El’s brow furrows, in concentration or confusion, Will can’t tell.

“I don’t understand.”

“Honestly,” Will admits, “me neither. But, there’s a lot of bad names for us out there. Words I don’t think I should be the one to tell you about. And in some places, especially small towns like this, being like me can get you hurt. Some people get killed.”

El looks horrified.

“For liking somebody? You could…get hurt…for liking Mike?”

Will nods.

“Yeah.”

“You’ve always been this way?”

Will thinks back to first grade, and the flutter he felt in his stomach when Mike let him borrow one of his shirts after they fell off the same bike trying to ride together and Will got covered in mud. He thinks of third grade and holding both of Mike’s hands as they spin in a circle faster and faster and faster until eventually their hands become so sweaty they fly apart. He thinks of him and Mike falling asleep on his couch together, late at night watching scary movies, until they both become too big to fit, and how the utter rightness of it all makes him feel off balance every single time.

“Yeah. For as long as I can remember.”

And it’s always been Mike, every single time.

“Does it hurt? To hide?” El’s eyes are big and full of tears. “It hurts me to hide.”

And El would know all about hiding, wouldn’t she? From the Demogorgon, the Mind Flayer, the Upside Down, the Bad Men. Just like Will. She hides at Hopper's and in plain sight, living a half-life, disconnected from the rest of the world.

Like Will.

Different, in a way.

But still…

“More than anything.” And suddenly Will wants to cry too.

“I’m sorry if I took Mike…”

El reaches out as if to take Will’s hand, and he lets her.

“No. He…he was never mine. And with you, he’s happy.”

They both look up at him, at the top of the hill, black hair gleaming in the sun, laughing loud and bright.

“That’s all I could ever ask for,” Will continues. “For the two of you to be happy.” 


End file.
